By 
Robert is an eCommerce entrepreneur and CEO of Amazon Automation an Amazon business management service as well as helping online business owners of all types sell their business when looking to exit. The Amazon business service is called AmazonAutomation.com and the online marketplace he operates is called ecomexchange.com.
How did you get into what you do right now? Please tell us more about your journey.
When I was in college, I asked my mom for some spending money, she told me to go get a job. Later that week I bought a “how to sell on Amazon” course for $500. 2 weeks later I had my first round of inventory going into Amazon to sell on the platform. It was a total failure. I didn’t give up and continued to test new inventory. Finally, after many failures, I began to have success on Amazon’s platform. In 2019 I opened up AmazonAutomation.com which runs people’s online Amazon stores entirely for them. The only responsibilities clients have are to open an LLC and supply money for order fulfillment we handle the rest. The business is designed to create a passive stream of income for clients. In the month of February, we sold just over $700,000 worth of products for clients in that one month alone. At the beginning of 2021, I began to start to sell Amazon businesses to other “automation companies” we have been fortunate enough to begin to start to pick up momentum toward to month of March 2021.
I’m currently working on a marketplace project called ecomexchange.com, where business owners can register their business for sale. Our company provides leads to individuals looking to sell their e-commerce businesses, and our company helps facilitate the transactions when it comes time to close. We take a small fee of the transaction depending on the size of the business. We plan to launch the platform at the beginning of May 2021 and anticipate brokering over 1000 e-commerce business transactions within our first 2 years. We also plan to have 1000’s businesses registered for sale on the platform at any given time. I’m very excited about where the future is heading!
What habits / strategies / secrets do you feel help you succeed?
Consistency – Consistency is the key to success. Showing up every day will inevitably cause you to improve and grow no matter what you’re doing. Anyone you ask who works with me will tell you I am a “workhorse,” and it’s not because I work set hours but because I’m consistently doing what I love to do! Live life will achieve daily goals – Setting goals every single day brings long-term positive results. If you aim to get a better 1% every day, factual growth will occur. Every day, I wake up and have a new set of goals; every week, I have different goals. Setting the bar for where you want to be and envisioning what needs to happen is the key to organized growth. Travel – Travel is something that is one of my secrets to being able to problem-solve. I was told by a mentor a while ago that you need to change your environment at least once every two months; it forces your brain two adapt and handle change. When you stunt your brain like that and makes you think differently and creatively. Every time I travel, business always comes in the most, and new ideas are always flowing, allowing me to problem solve and grow.
What is the most important factor behind your success / the success of your brand?
Building a following on social media has been the driving factor to my companies’ growth and my own personal development. Making sure you are engaging and interacting with your followers daily builds a “virtual trust” and attracts people to do business with you. Even if all else fails, you always have a brand/following to sell to.
What has your business or career taught you? What is the most important lesson?
My business/career has taught me that you must be patient to achieve growth; things don’t happen overnight. Additionally, if you were looking to grow, you can’t do it by yourself; you have to have people with you who equally see the vision for you to get the progress you need. It’s impossible to do 1 million things at once, but it makes it a lot easier when you’re not doing it by yourself.
How did you overcome challenges professionally to get where you are today?
Picking up the phone – Often, when a client/work relationship calls who is unhappy, people tend to defer from handling the situation right then and there. This is something that I overcame very early in my career. More times than not, if there is a problem and someone is trying to address it, it’s best to handle that problem immediately. There is no point in dodging it; it’s bad business and can lead to a bad rep. Amazon throwing wrenches – Dealing with Amazon is not a walk in the park. Back when I first started my automation company, amazon pushed back on allowing many of my clients to sell on their platform. I had to think creatively and logically to work with Amazon. I learned that it’s important to have people on your team smarter than you in certain aspects. I realized this when I hired my first “amazon reinstatement expert,” working with people who can help accelerator the solutions to problems, allowing you to jump-start and beat the learning curve. Again, I am grateful for the team I have built and the people I have working with me every day. Making the appearance – Now, in 2021, it’s very uncommon for someone to say they want to meet you before working with you. Anyone who works with me knows that I have no issue with booking a flight day to fly to meet someone if there is a problem or to build a new relationship. When people see me arrive, they understand that I mean what I say, and I don’t mess around. This is something that I learned from an individual who had a real estate investment portfolio at one point valued at over $500m. deadweight – There is no point in working with someone or paying someone who doesn’t bring value to your company. If you feel that they are a liability more than an asset more times than not, you have to analyze the situation and release them. A team works in unison and efficiently; if someone is slacking, you have a conversation with them and make sure that they understand how you feel and let them know what needs to change. A simple conversation can go a long way. Thinking outside the box – The world is changing faster than ever, and you need to adapt to change. Having a creative mind and thought process would put you ahead of completion; some examples for me are Different methods to selling on Amazon’s platform, creating appeals to reinstate amazon businesses, seeing open markets and acting on them, hiring virtual assistants in mass, breaking down a business before starting one, handling unique customer situations, negotiation, the list goes on. If you can’t problem-solve fast and efficiently, you will fail at the end of the day.
How are you using different social media channels / online marketing to advertise your work?
I have grown a following on Instagram, which is the lead reason for new business. I show myself working and advertise myself every single day through my following. I show people what I do and the day-to-day of my business. It allows me to get my business in front of thousands of people eyes a day for FREE. Other online marketing ways that I advertise are through Facebook, Google, and SEO. Facebook and Google bring in leads to my business and allow my sales team to sell a new business; it’s an affordable way to present your business in front of thousands of people a day. SEO, it’s the best way to market; once you have enough organic traffic coming through the website daily, your business is there to stay. If you stop paying for SEO, the organic daily traffic still comes if you stop paying for Facebook or Google ads, no leads come in. Social media is the best way for me to advertise what I do!
How do the social, economic, environmental, technological, legal, and political environments impact your business?
Well, this is a very loaded question, but the answer to this is usually in a positive way. For example, this year during Covid, many retail business owners were affected drastically. But as for us, we are own online businesses, so social and technology forced growth. More people become dependent on the Internet, having products delivered to their house or, in some other cases, people started an online business. Environmentally we try and stay as green as possible having online businesses does not require us to use equipment and machines on a day-to-day basis, and we can work simply off of our computers. The political impacts of my business were all positive this year. The media and the government told people to order online and avoid going out of the house, making our online business space blow up. Every single day there are more and more online business owners joining this market in 2020-2021. This was the biggest year my company has ever seen growth, and I feel that the growth was primarily promoted because of covid-19 forcing more and more individuals to become reliant on the Internet.
How would you describe your customers?
My customers from AmazonAutomation.com are typically business owners or people who already have investments looking to grow an e-commerce portfolio. Most of our customers are 20 to 30 years old and have maybe tried selling on the Internet before, and it failed and are just looking for a done for you service. Our customers are extremely understanding and easy to work with. I’m very thankful for that! As for ecomexchange.com, customers are typically seasoned entrepreneurs looking to build a portfolio of already operating businesses underneath their management. They are looking to buy an already existing business. Buyers always have money and are open to the idea of taking over and already operating a business. Most customers are previous business owners, and always a unique situation when dealing with a new close.
What sets you apart from others / competitors? What are you most excited or proud of?
I’m apart from other competitors with AmazonAutomation.com is the quality of customer service we have with clients. We feel that building a relationship with every single client is super important and leads to long-term success. Also, we have United States management living in Bangladesh monitoring and handling the operations overseas as we have an office there. We also have a powerful online business reinstatement program where sellers have a very high likelihood when working with us to have their online business reinstated if Amazon suspends their account. As for ecomexchange.com, what I’m most excited about the fact that we are joining an open market. I cannot wait for us to grow this business and take full advantage of the blue ocean of online business owners looking to sell. With over 10 million online business owners in America alone, we feel a massive market to buy and sell already operational e-commerce companies. We have a business valuation feature that allows business owners to see what their business is worth, and I cannot wait to launch that business.
What inspires you? What keeps you going when things get tough?
Oh, this is a funny question because the answer is the adrenaline rush. There is something about being a business owner and working through problems and difficult situations which keep us going. The idea of tomorrow will be a better day, or the problem will be resolved soon, or I know I can handle us keeps me going. What inspires me is the idea of building an economy. I want to build something that gets so big that we can feed thousands of people every single day just from our company and have our business create a tool that people can leverage. I love the idea of growth and the idea of turning a vision into reality!
Looking back, what’s one thing you wish you understood better before you ever got started?
Looking back, the one thing I understood before I got started is the importance of marketing. Without marketing, there’s no new business. I wish that I started marketing way before I actually started marketing.
We all have people that have supported us through our journey either by mentorship, encouragement or love. Who deserves a some recognition or credit? and why?
Jonas Muthoni – Jonas is not only a mentor but also a business partner. He pushes me to think outside of the box and forces me to become a more aggressive leader. He helps me problem solve and has taught me that I could handle more than I could think. His desire for growth and his love for software has open my mind up to the tech industry, and having us working together on our new venture ecomexchange.com will lead to a very lethal and dominant business.
Jack Benson – Jack is my best friend; growing up, we both dropped out of college simultaneously, and both subconsciously push each other to be better and stronger entrepreneurs every day. We owned our first business together, a landscaping company, and have since we have grown in opposite directions. What I mean by that is he owns a construction company, and I own Internet-based businesses. Jack is a friend and a motivation to me and definitely is part of the reason I am where I am today.
Wandy Toussaint – Wandy is a close relationship of mine and somebody in the Amazon community who I could reach out to with any question I have and have full transparency in the answer. He’s not only a friend but a reliable source in the Amazon automation community. He and I have had countless phone calls back-and-forth working out problems we face when dealing with Amazon. I’m grateful for the relationship I have and thankful that the Amazon community is so supportive of one another.
What’s your greatest fear?
My greatest fear is disappointment. The last thing I want to do is let somebody down, or have a different expectation when working with me and not be satisfied. As a leader, your team looks up to you, and so does everybody else, and it is imperative not to disappoint people. Always showing up and being there to fix problems immediately will prevent people from being disappointed. Disappointment is something that I never want anybody ever to feel when working with me, so we have systemized and put together an operation to run efficiently and problem-free to have the best experience possible.
What’s your most memorable experience?
My most memorable experience was when I took my first business trip out to Arizona. I just dropped out of college at that time and was pretty much dead broke. I stayed with somebody who was already in the e-commerce space. I went out there to get mentored and learn about Facebook ads, but I didn’t even learn about Facebook ads ironically. The trip opened my eyes up to the reality that people my age or a couple of years older were living the exact life (materialistically) that I wanted: penthouse, sports cars, making money through online businesses, and living the life that I never thought was possible to live at my age. That trip set a vision for possibility because I already saw people living how I wanted to live.
Any message for our readers
My message for the reader would be to self-invest in your personal brand on social media. The most important thing to do in 2021 is to have a brand built around your name and reputation on social media. If you have a goal in mind that you want to achieve, don’t stop until you hit that goal or come close. Set the bar high and set goals high because you’ll come close if you don’t reach that full goal. For example, please don’t say I want to make $1 million because you’re setting the bar at $1 million. So, say you want to make $10 million because $1 million is only one-tenth of that, and more time is not, you’ll reach 10% Off your goal!
If you were to recommend a book / documentary, what would it be? and why?
If I were to recommend a book to anybody, I would recommend the book “You2”; this book talks about quantum leaps and will open your mind up to the idea of thinking bigger and acting faster. Another one of my favorite reads is “F.U. Money” by Dan Lok. I’ve probably listened to this book 10 times, one of my favorites.
How can people connect with you? Social Media / Website Links?
If you’d like to connect with me over social media, please send me a direct message on Instagram. My handle is @robertdelgrande_. It’s always me responding to my direct messages, and I love connecting with new people. To work with me, check out amazonautomation.com or ecomexchange.com.
